My hospital adventure Part 5

The first week in the hospital, I had a lot of trouble with nausea. They put me on iv meds several times a day. Obviously I also had no appetite. Someone even came to see me because I kept not ordering food. I couldn’t face hospital food. I had no idea if it would be good or not, but the food at the hospital I’d had my surgery at was truly awful. Even the fried eggs.

Fortunately at home I had simple gluten free crackers, and some relatively tasty, allergy friendly, protein shakes and Mike brought me regular care packages. I did fine with that.

After they drained the abscess and I started to feel better, I started ordering food from the kitchen. The food was not at all terrible, if uninspired. The pot roast was actually pretty tasty. They had all my allergies listed in the computer and double checked them each time I ordered.

Which did not stop me from somehow getting a hamburger on a bun. And since I was feeling better, I did raise a complete fuss. Less for me, but because there was obviously a disconnect somewhere in the system to let that happen. What if it had come when I was really stupid that first week? Or next time it’s someone’s creaky old grandma? What if I had assumed it was a gluten free bun and made myself sick from that? It would have extended my already much too long stay. I was very gratified at how seriously they took it. I eventually met the floor nutritionist, the head of the kitchen, and the actual line supervisor in the kitchen. It was really nice to have my food issues taken so seriously.

In the second week one of the techs explained to me how to use the built in movie system, so I got to stop watching tv. It’s a terrible system. They have much edited movies, it was hard to pause, and if you backed out of the movie to stop it for, say, a visit from one of your many doctors, it might randomly send you back to the beginning of the movie. No fast forward, only a 30 second skip. sigh. Fortunately with the PICC line my issues with bending my arm were over and I went back to reading. My kindle was stocked with new books for the cruise we were supposed to take in January.

Which obviously, we did not take. We actually cancelled it right after my surgery because it wasn’t a good idea to go away so soon after something like that, and it turned out to be an excellent call. Not only because I did have a complication, but also because the day we were supposed to leave on our trip we had a huge ice storm, and our flight out was cancelled.

Eventually, after 17 days I lost the extra water weight from my unhappy kidneys, my drain was working well, and my blood thinner numbers got where they needed to be and I got to go home.